The Carnival Master

2.

It had been a week. Nothing. Maria had listened to the radio, watched the TV news, bought a Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper every day. She had probably taken the life of another human being, or at least seriously wounded him. Yet there was no mention anywhere of a body being found, or even of a BMW full of bullet holes being uncovered in a ditch somewhere. The Ukrainian had vanished into thin air. What she did find in the paper was a small piece about the murder in the kitchen of the Biarritz restaurant. She had made Slavko Dmytruk think that he could trust her. That she would keep him safe. Instead he’d been butchered because she had coerced him into talking to her.

The body of the Ukrainian had probably already been disposed of by his own people, or he had survived and they were nursing his wounds. In either case, they would be looking for her. But as long as she didn’t go near the bar or Viktor’s apartment, she reckoned she should be okay. And if they really had no idea about her identity or where to find her, then there was always the chance she could slip out of the city. Back to Hamburg. Back to her job. Back to her own identity.

But there had been a value in coming here: becoming someone else, something other than the object of self-loathing she had been for months, had allowed Maria to step out from under the phobias and neuroses that had piled one on top of the other until they had threatened to crush her to death. All around her were reminders of the forthcoming Karneval in Cologne, and only now was she beginning to understand how these people revelled in a few days of insanity, of chaos. The city became something else, the people in it became someone else. And after it was all over and they stepped back into their normal lives, they seemed to keep something of Karneval alive inside them. Maybe, she thought, that was what she had achieved.

God knew she had achieved nothing else. Whatever had possessed her to think that she could come here alone and track down one of the most dangerous and sophisticated organised-crime bosses in Europe? She saw now how hopeless and half-baked her pathetic little crusade had been. She would drop out of sight for another week or so; stay in her friend’s apartment, then go back to Hamburg. She would find a decent hairdresser and dye her hair back to its normal colour. She would don the clothes and personality of the old Maria, but without the neuroses. No one in Hamburg need ever know she’d been here.

Maria had to deal with the car. This second hotel was just off the Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer by the river and she had left the Saxo parked in the lot around the corner from the first. She would then drive it back to the garage she’d bought it from and let them buy it back for a fraction of what she’d paid. It had been an expensive car rental.

Maria was about to dress in one of her cheap guises but she checked herself and donned instead a smart designer suit that she had brought down with her. She was amazed at how well it went with her newly dark hair. She made up her face and looked at herself again in the mirror. Almost the old Maria. Except she made up her mind to pick up a late breakfast on her way to the car dealership.

Maria headed out of the hotel and walked with a renewed vigour and confidence. She had gone about two blocks when she became aware of someone close to her side and slightly behind her. Suddenly he was leaning into her and his fingers closed like a vice around her upper arm. Something that was unmistakably the barrel of a handgun was rammed into her back, above her hip.

‘Do exactly what I say.’ Maria felt a cold, hard fear rise in her as she recognised the accent as Ukrainian. ‘Get into the back of the van up ahead.’

The door swung open from inside as they approached the large panel van. Maria was bustled in by the gunman while a second figure, inside the van and unseen by Maria, swiftly pulled a blackout hood over her head. Something stung her arm and she felt a chill surge as something was injected into it.